Friday, July 27, 2012

Self Portrait Assignment (or learning to love your tripod)

I have been following Kelly over at Live Laugh Rowe and her super talented sister, Kristine at Kristine Lynn Photography over the last couple of week s for a Self Portrait Challenge. Kristine gave us a whole bunch of tips on how to take better self portraits of ourselves.

I find it is never easy to look at pictures of myself because most of the pictures I've done my own makeup and hair. And the lighting is never good . And I'm making some kind of goofy face. blah blah blah. I think the only day so far in my life where I have liked every picture is my wedding day. Because.....somebody else did my hair, makeup, and was there to tell me if I was making a dumb face.

I've been watching my friend, Michelle over at Callia's Corner the past few weeks being all diligent and taking all kinds of great self portraits of herself. And I was all like, " Yeah, I'll do that today." She made it look too easy. I had all intentions of trying to do this multiple times to practice but life and kids intervened and I got to it once, in 100+ degree heat. Yeah, me!

So it shows up when I publish this post.... I think this is my favorite one...

Manual ISO 400, 1/100, f 6.3

Or do you like the Black and white version?

But this one was good too....

Or this one...

My house has exactly three places where any lights hit all day ( note to
self: next house...more windows). And yesterday happened to be all
overcast and cloudy so none of that light was coming in. So I headed out
in the heat by my fence. I set up the tripod and a piece of tape on
the fence for focusing.

Here is one of my blurry shots. The fence is in way more focus than I am.

Then K wouldn't take a nap so then she was outside with me. I mean, look at that sweat on the sides of her nose. Yep, sweaty.

Her job was to make me laugh and keep the dog out of the way. See how much that worked...

He photo bombed me !!

I just wanted you all to see that when i get a blog award I'm all like ahhhh...

Then I'm all eeeeee....

I course I couldn't not have her jump in one time.

Thanks for all the tips , Kelly and Kristine! I might actually use one of these for my front page photo and about page.

These are great! I'm so glad that I saw this over on Six Sisters and that I came here for the low down. Thanks for pointing me to the other blogs so that I can learn to do a self portrait. There ain't nobody at my house who seems to care enough to take a picture of me. They are all like, "okay smile." Snap. Then they look at the pic on the camera and say, "Yep. Looks just like you", hand me the camera, and walk away. My husband is 6'4" and everything he takes is from a foot above me looking down at me. My head is sort of at the bottom of the picture with the top 3/4 of the picture filled with whatever is above my head...the wall, the sky, the trees, whatever. He tries, but his talents definitely fall into other areas. Anyway, thanks for a great post and for giving me some hope. You pictures are great and your little girl is darling. Kids are just so natural in photos.

Thanks and no problem. Self portraits are so tough that I think I will always need some help. I hear ya with the husband thing. Mine is only 6 foot but I'm 5'3" so yep, short pictures. BTW, gorgeous kitchen. I'm showing my hubby.

These are fantastic photographs! Any of them would be perfect for your "About me" page. I just added a picture of myself to my blog yesterday. It's cropped from a photo my sister snapped of my son and me...you can even see part of his face in the photo. I need to take your lead and use a tripod and take my own photo. Thanks for the inspiration! (found you through Tip Junkie)

The photos look great! Thank you for sharing this at Saturday Show and Tell. I can't wait to see what you have for this week! I look forward to seeing you there. -Mackenziehttp://www.cheeriosandlattes.com